Which Fund Should You Use for SWP? A Guide to SWP Investment Planning
Choosing the right fund for your SWP can make the difference between sustainable income and running out of money.
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6 thoughts on “Which Fund Should You Use for SWP? A Guide to SWP Investment Planning”
simply put, for a typical 30-40 year retirement journey, what would be a good mix for income and growth?lets say a debt allocation of 7-8 yrs expense (would that take care of a market cycle?), with equity replenishing the debt bucket at each interval. is that something that will work? and for the debt bucket would you then break it up as a short term allocation (UST or an Arb fund)+ medium term allocation (Cons hybrid) ?
thanks
Hello Sir,
About your question: will 7-8 years expense in Debt and rest in Equity – Assuming total corpus is at least 25 times annual expense at the time of retirement; this could work in majority of the cases. However, if we look at the US data for reference, such a portfolio could run into trouble if the retirement was started in late 60s to early 70s, as the 70s saw around a decade of stagflation; where both Equity, and Debt struggled.
Adding some portfolio insurance (Gold) and some allocation to Cash, in addition to Debt could have improved the outcome to a great extent in this period.
It is difficult to conduct long-term retirement withdrawal analysis using India’s historical data, as our equity markets and growth/inflation dynamics were still maturing.
On your query about short-term allocation (UST or Arbitrage fund) alone, or with medium-term allocation (Conservative Hybrid), I believe either option could work. In both cases, the SWP would always be drawn from UST or an Arbitrage fund. The Conservative Hybrid fund, if included, would act as an additional bucket with rules for asset movement. For example, after a market consolidation, the Conservative Hybrid fund could replenish the SWP bucket while the Growth bucket remains untouched. After a bull market, the Growth bucket could refill both the SWP bucket and the Conservative Hybrid fund.
Best regards
Thank you for the article, it was an interesting read. My plan was always to split the SWP portion into a debt fund and keep the growth portion separate. What happens when you do this for a 10 or 20 year withdrawal with Nifty 500 TRI but keep 3 years withdrawal in a debt fund. It’s difficult to do this in a simulation, but assume you replenish your debt portion only in an year when market returns are positive.
You are welcome! Glad you found it interesting.
Multi‑asset withdrawal portfolios can’t be directly simulated in the spreadsheet attached to the article. However, you can vary return and volatility assumptions to test different combinations. Often, a portfolio with slightly lower return and lower volatility is more likely to sustain withdrawals.
Regarding keeping limited assets in an SWP source and replenishing it from the growth portfolio: this needs to account for historical edge cases, such as periods when equity markets were flat or negative for an extended time. One way to address this is by using a growth portfolio that itself includes some less‑correlated assets to domestic equity—such as international equity (though the MF route is currently limited), gold, or others. The goal is to avoid being forced to sell an asset when market conditions are unfavorable.
Best regards
This an interesting, and very useful analysis. The choice of the ‘index’ is very realistic and can be practically applied with the product choices that we have in India.
Two suggestions: 1. For the simulator, you may want to add another note that the simulations also may show capital running out; this happens more often when the volatility is set high. If the capital does not run out after 30 years, but the final withdrawal rate is higher than initial, the simulator notes this – but it could still be a ‘success’
2. The table in the article gives the CAGR and the monthly stdev. The simulator asks for annual volatility. If the table can include the annual volatility figure too, it would help greatly. Or better still, the simulator can be modified to take the monthly volatility number.
Hello,
Thank you for the suggestions. Please find the annual standard deviation of the indices during the analysis period below:
Index: Annual standard deviation
Nifty 500 TRI: 28.30%
Nifty 50 Hybrid Composite Debt 65:35 Index: 15.44%
Nifty 50 Hybrid Composite Debt 15:85 Index: 4.94%
Nifty Corporate Bond Index: 2.97%
Nifty Short Duration Debt Index: 2.37%
Nifty Ultra Short Duration Debt Index: 1.72%
Best regards